Running A:M on Mountain Lion

[largento]

I finally decided to take the plunge. After skipping Lion all together, I figured I'd better catch up with the OS before I get completely left behind.

 

I went out and bought a new HD and spent all of yesterday backing up my old HD in case this doesn't go well.

 

After a lengthy download, I've installed Mountain Lion and went straight away to see if it had any adverse affects on A:M.

 

By coincidence, this is the day that my subscription expired, but I'd known it was coming and had bought my upgrade last week. After pulling out the files so that I could get A:M to prompt me to activate it, I entered the activation code and started up v16b. Everything seemed fine until I went to open a cho file. No luck. A:M couldn't couldn't access the Finder and the beachball came up and it became unresponsive. I forced quit and tried three more times. Same each time.

 

I decided to start fresh and downloaded v17.0a and put in my activation code. It started up fine and success! It could access the Finder. Guess I finally got the push to go to v17. :-)

 

Didn't spend a lot of time in A:M this time, but will do so this evening.

 

Anybody else using A:M with Mountain Lion?

[Rodney]

I decided to start fresh and downloaded v17.0a and put in my activation code. It started up fine and success! It could access the Finder. Guess I finally got the push to go to v17. :-)

 

Woo hoo! Congrats on you move to Mountain Lion and v17.0a!

 

Just so I'm not misunderstanding, are you saying that the finder issue of old is gone with the combo of v17 and Mountain Lion?

(That'd be great news for Mac Users)

[largento]

I can't definitively say that, but in the short time I played with it, opening and closing and saving files, I did not encounter the glitch a single time.

 

This will, indeed be great news, if it turns out to be the case! :-)

[Darkwing]

Interesting. If I had the money to blow, I'd ditch this pathetic laptop of mine altogether. How does Mountain Lion run on the whole though? ANything stand out to you?

[largento]

So far, so good, Darkwing.

 

I had worried about a slowdown, but some UI things actually seem quicker. Right now, apps seem a little slow to launch, but I'm pretty sure that this is because the system is indexing everything right now.

 

I should have pointed out that when I went to re-install A:M, I was at first prevented from doing so by the OS. By default, the security is now set to only allow you to install apps via the App Store or from "identified developers." They call this Gatekeeper and it's meant to make it more difficult to install a malicious application. The fix is to go into the security panel of the system preferences and switch to "Allow applications downloaded from Anywhere." Once it's installed, you can go back to the more secure setting (or the highest one that only allows applications bought from the App Store.)

 

I skipped Lion, so it's a definite annoyance trying to retrain my brain to scroll in the opposite direction. I know I can turn this off in the system preferences, but since this is the way it's going to work from now on, I'm just trying to get used to it. I've encountered this with using other Macs at freelance jobs, so I did know it was coming.

 

Being able to resize windows by dragging either bottom corner rather than just being able to do it in the one corner is something I'm going to really like.

 

Mail displays your messages in threads, so that clicking on an email shows you each of the messages in the conversation as individual sheets. That's cool.

 

I haven't used Launchpad, but then it's not the way I'm used to doing things.

 

I like the notification center. It's nice to have the notifications come up where you can see a clip of the new email, so you can see what's come in without having to actually go to the mail app. It's like Growl.

 

One big motivation for me (besides not finding myself so far behind that I could only upgrade from a new install) was the iCloud stuff. Having an iPhone and iPad, it's nice to have things synched across the board. I had this to a degree with my old dot Mac account, but I had to give that up a couple of years ago.

 

One thing I like to do with my iPad is write notes and now there's a notes app on the desktop that synchs up, meaning that I now have access to these thoughts from any device.

 

Also the upgrade allows me to use Apple's free "iBooks Author" application that I could use to create an interactive book. I thought it would be cool to do a children's book that incorporated animated sequences and this gives me an easy, free way to do it.

[Darkwing]

All very interesting. How much did the upgrade cost? It might be too new for my laptop anyways and I did just upgrade to Snow Leopard, so I have little reason to upgrade again so soon.

[largento]

The upgrade cost is pretty small ($19.99).

 

My laptop did not make the cut (it won't even run Lion) and my Mac Pro is the earliest one that can still be updated.

 

The official word is:

 

iMac (mid 2007 or newer)

MacBook (late 2008 aluminum or Early 2009 or newer)

MacBook Pro (mid/late 2007 or newer)

MacBook Air (Early 2008 or newer)

Mac mini (early 2009 or newer)

Mac Pro (early 2008 or newer)

Xserve (early 2009)

 

You need to have either Snow Leopard or Lion installed, have at least 2GB of memory and 8GB of space on your hard drive.

 

I wouldn't rush out to buy a new Mac to get the new OS, but it sounds like yours is coming up on the end of its life cycle.

[Darkwing]

Yeah. I shoulda bought a pro. Oh well. It's just it's a pretty short life cause I've only had it 3 years, but it deteriorates fast, both physically and operationally